Pages

You MUST read this book! The Witch of Bracken's Hollow by Evan Winters now available!

Friday, October 9, 2015

Ever have a book scare you so much you had to go Joey Tribianni on it?

Yes, that is EXACTLY the experience I had reading this novella by Evan Winters. And I write horror! So let me make a disclaimer. Evan Winters has been my friend for the last almost 20 years. That said, Evan is a damned-good author. His literary works have been nominated for competitive, well-respected honors/awards.I read an ARC of The Witch of Bracken's Hollow one evening when it was late, I was tired, and hte house was dead quiet. At one point, I had to put the laptop down and do a lap around the house to work off the goosebumps. Y'all are going to love this book. That said, let me give you the details.

Novella Description:

Damon knows that the Witch of Bracken's
Hollow is just a myth. He knew it when he was a child and his friend Rachel
drowned in Deep Run Lake and became another victim of the legendary witch. And
he knows it now that he is a youth pastor in charge of a camp full of teenagers
meeting at the same lodge where Rachel drowned all those years ago.

But as memories of Rachel's
death play on Damon's mind, he finds the boundaries between reality and fantasy
blurring before his eyes. When a voice whispers Damon’s name at the
witching hour, he must sort out history from myth, fact from fiction, and he
must do so before the children he is charged to care for suffer the same fate
as Rachel.

Sample Chapter:

Standing in the backyard of the Unity
Road Baptist Church Retreat, Damon Daugherty gazed out across the black waters
of Deep Run Lake to the woods that ran into Bracken’s Hollow and for unknown
miles beyond. For the umpteenth time that day, Damon struggled with the strange
feeling that he was somehow peering not just through space but backward through
time. There he stood in the present on a chilly October day. The sound of
laughter came from inside the lodge where his friends were preparing dinner in
the kitchen. Damon, on the other hand, labored with refuse. In each hand, he
held a trash bag, both of which sagged heavily under the weight of discarded
bottles, cigarette packages, and all the rest of the debris that had been left
on the trails around the lake by local kids over the course of a long summer
worth of secret parties in the woods. Damon had spent the afternoon cleaning up
the campsite in preparation for the teen retreat he would be hosting that
weekend—his first as the youth minister of Unity Road Baptist. His labors that
day had been simple and straightforward, requiring little in the way of mental
effort.

But even after several hours working
under a cold October sun, Damon couldn’t help but feel out of step with the
present moment. Excitement ticked in his chest, a childish impatience so strong
that it bordered on anxiety. Damon supposed it was to be expected. Though he
was a grown man with a set of new challenges before him, he had grown up a
member of Unity Road Baptist. He had attended many retreats at Deep Run as a
kid, and it had been over ten years since his last visit.

All afternoon, as Damon had worked along
the bank of Deep Run, he had found memories waiting to ambush him around every
corner. For the first few hours, as he picked trash out of the trail that ran
along the lakeside, he couldn’t help but glance from time to time out to the
dock expecting to see his junior high school buddies cannonballing off the end
or challenging each other to dive all the way to the bottom and return with a
handful of mud from the mucky bottom.

Later, as he cleaned out the fire pit in
the clearing along the eastern path and gathered a batch of firewood for the
next night, the nostalgia was so strong that Damon could almost hear the hymns
he’d sung around that fire pit so many times in his youth. Then, as he cleaned trash
from the trail that led into Bracken’s Hollow, Damon’s memories of hikes he had
taken with his father were so strong that he could almost feel the man’s
footsteps following along the dirt path behind him.

But for all these fine memories of his
youth at Deep Run, one memory lurked under them all, rising up from the depths
of Damon’s consciousness like some submerged leviathan coming up for air. So,
after depositing the trash into the bins at the corner of the lodge, Damon
turned back to the lake and gave it a long, thoughtful look. Over the course of
the past week, as he had been making arrangements for the retreat, Damon had
been quietly bracing himself for his return to the lake. Damon’s ten-year
absence had not been accidental. Damon was no fool. He had known this memory
would come for him. And as he gazed out across the dark waters shimmering in
the late afternoon light, he let it rise up in him in the shape of a single
word, spoken aloud.

“Rachel,” he said.

Then, as if in reply, a voice called to
him from inside. “Damon! Come on! These steaks ain’t getting any more done than
they are. Least not on my watch.”

“Be right there,” Damon shouted in reply.
Then he turned away from the water and went inside, forcing himself not to look
back. He’d had enough of the past for one day.

About the author:

Evan Winters lives in Kentucky with his wife and dogs.
He is a lifelong fan of horror and speculative fiction, be it in the form of
comic books, film, short fiction or novels.The Witch of Bracken's Hollowis the first fiction he has published
in the 21st Century. He hopes it won't be the last.